Should Have Known
by Sohara von Salienta
Summary: Why would a young, independent, rich woman insist on marrying a man who is clearly in love with someone else? What kind of creature would hurt Marianne so badly? And is Mrs. Willoughby the unfeeling monster her husband described?


It was a long time before Sophia really understood her husband.

At first, everything seemed simple. They'd met at a party. She'd seen him from across the room, and flushed horribly when she realized she'd been staring. He asked her for the second two dances. The evening was a dream.

He called the next day, beautiful in a dark blue coat. He admired her embroidery and told her that her skill was beyond anything he had ever seen. Her heart leapt, and she secretly began work on an elaborate handkerchief for him. A week later, he gave her a collection of poems.

Then his cousin called him away to Devonshire for a few weeks. Sophia bade him farewell with a smile on her lips, knowing she would miss him but overcome with fluttery hope at the memory of the look in his eyes. Her uncle dropped a snide sentence about fortune-hunters, and she snapped at him. She'd know if he were lying. John Willoughby couldn't have looked at her the way he did and not loved her.

She knew him. She knew.

He came back oddly altered - strangely sadder. Mrs. Smith was ill, he said, and although she missed his frank joy in her company, she honoured him for his feelings, and grieved for him. He was a good man, she'd say, and she protested violently against her aunt's disparaging comments about his debts.

He squired her everywhere, and he asked her to marry him one lovely night after the opera, alone under the stars as he said farewell to her on her steps. It was not formal, it was not correct; it was everything she loved about him. She closed her eyes when he kissed her then for the first time, throwing her correct upbringing to the wind. She'd have done anything for him. Heart aglow, she said yes, and wished she knew how to say more.

She was happier than she had ever been in her life when he squired her to the Fitzgeralds' ball several days later. A young, inexpensively dressed woman suddenly jostled past a number of guests, accosted him, and seemed to claim an uncomfortably close attachment. John certainly looked uncomfortable, as well he might, but he repulsed the young lady quite correctly and left with Sophia on his arm. The young lady was a Miss Dashwood, he explained, who lived in the neighbourhood of Allenham. He had seen her in the company of his friends at Barton Park; apparently, she was given to flights of fancy. He said he had been nothing but civil. Sophia wanted to protest; she wanted to say that the lovestruck look on the young woman's face was horribly familiar, but he kissed her again and her protests dissipated.

For the rest of her life, she would wish that she had not invited him to breakfast the next morning. His footman delivered Miss Dashwood's letter just after Sophia poured them both coffee. Sophia just stared as he opened the envelope. No one, not even the most lovestruck, delusional girl, could have missed that blank, broken look as he read her letter.

"John," Sophia said softly. He didn't look up.

A few minutes of excruciating silence passed. Sophia squared her shoulders, her heart slamming into her bones.

"Give me the letter," she ordered in an unnaturally harsh voice. He jerked to attention, opened his mouth to protest, then handed it to her.

Sophia read it silently, her face unchanging. Then she placed it on the table between them, carefully.

"John," she said steadily, "do you love me?"

Later, she would know that she should have known better than to believe him. At the time, she was too relieved to doubt him.

"Of course I do," he replied.

She swallowed. "What other letters does she mean?"

When he finally drew them out of his wallet, Sophia forced herself to read them without flinching. Inside, she was raging. Every word sounded just as lovestruck as Sophia herself felt. They were horribly improper, but they said everything Sophia would have felt, had John not come back to see her after visiting Devonshire. Miss Dashwood's much prettier, much more passionate face kept floating in front of her eyes, and a cold claw of fear squeezed shut around Sophia's throat.

"I want you to answer her," she said shortly. "Write what I tell you."

He jerked to attention. "What?"

She looked back at him steadily. "If you love me, you will tell her so."

So he did. He wrote a letter that Sophia believed would sever him from Miss Dashwood forever, and she insisted that the lock of hair Willoughby kept carefully folded in his pocket be sent back as well. No woman could marry a man who kept another woman's curl of hair near his heart, and she thought, like a stupid child, that sending back such intimate reminders would cool John's affection - if not immediately, then certainly over time.

So they were married. Neither flinched when they said their vows, and although Sophia ached desperately for the Willoughby she had first known, she hoped that, as the memories of that other woman faded, his heart would once again wholly return to her.

She should have known.

It was several years before she realized he would never again try to make her believe he loved her. At first, she would show him she was unhappy in hopes that he would feel enough remorse to comfort her, but his face would shut down, he'd leave the room, and he'd call for his horse. Slowly, Sophia grew bitter, and finally, after years of loving a man who had long since stopped pretending, her loyalty turned sour. She snapped at him in front of relatives, excoriated him in private, and sobbed her heart out in the privacy of her lonely bedroom.

She'd have turned to a lover if she had been pretty or good-natured enough to attract one. Instead, she threw her energy into committees and charities and pretended not to hear the gossip about her husband's eventual short dalliances. Her hair turned gray, her heart was armored; she became the picture of a militant domineering dowager. No one who met her could blame her husband for looking elsewhere.

John died on a hunting trip some thirty years after their wedding, taking a jump too recklessly. When they told her, Sophia said nothing. They called her unfeeling, and heartless. She kept a lock of his hair in a ring, and wore black for the rest of her life.

She wished he had known.


End file.
